Oil and gas opponents will have to move faster

The Bureau of Land Management is shortening the
amount of time that citizens and environmental groups in Wyoming
and Utah will have to protest oil and gas lease sales, and is in
the process of formulating a new nationwide policy for such
protests.

In Wyoming, the BLM posts notices of which
parcels will be leased 45 days prior to each lease auction; people
with concerns about particular leases can file protests up to 4
p.m. the day before the sale. Under the new regulations, however,
the protest period will be cut off 15 days prior to the sale. That
will give BLM staff time to resolve protested leases, says Pamela
Lewis, the chief of fluid minerals adjudication for the BLM in
Wyoming.

In Utah, the agency currently posts sale notices
60 days in advance, and cuts off protests 15 days before the sale.
Beginning with the auction this August, however, the agency will
end the protest period 30 days before the sale.

"They
shortened the protest period on the tail end," says Bruce Pendery,
an attorney for the Wyoming Outdoor Council. He says that several
groups have asked the BLM to provide "more notice to us on the
front end of things. We don’t object to (BLM) having more
time to look our protests over, but we still need adequate time to
look at the lease parcels."